I can’t believe the school year is already over. Nathaniel was just a baby last week and he’s finishing first grade today. How quickly does time pass??? Our school has the tradition of the students presenting their own portfolios at the end of each year. So Nathaniel got to present his portfolio for the first time this year.
I was very happy to see that David wanted to join us, too. I loved how Nathaniel didn’t want to skip any pages. He wanted to tell us the backstory of each and every single page in his binder. I love how he’s still wearing the crown from the Crown’s Game launch. I love how he’s always so incredibly enthusiastic about everything he does.
I love how much joy he brings into our lives.
Thank you sweet boy.
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
My friend Evelyn whom I mentioned in last week’s story also started a Young Adult Book Club. The most awesome thing about this club is that it’s all authors (and me.) Most of the folk in the group are Young Adult authors but not all. And we always read a Young Adult novel. Since I love reading just about anything, I really enjoy the picks this group has.
We always meet at the local coffee shop and the best part is that because the members are authors we discuss both the book and the art of crafting the book. I feel so lucky to be a part of this book club.
We’ve read many, many books that I would never have picked up on my own, including this graphic novel in the photo. (This One Summer.)
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
My sweet friend Evelyn quit her job six years ago to be come a writer. She was lawyer before but decided she wanted to write. And this year she published her first novel. It’s a Young Adult novel called The Crown’s Game. The book became a huge hit and debuted at #3 in the New York Times best seller list.
Doesn’t she make it look easy?
I know that she spent a lot of those six years writing, rewriting, throwing away, beginning again, doing a lot of putting herself out there, etc. But it’s still quite an amazing story to be able to set such an audacious goal and then to meet it. (Exceed it even!)
I am so proud of her and so very happy for her.
When her book launched, she had a big event at our local book store. Part of the event was the amazing food. She had a friend make Russian pastries that were in the theme of the book. These swans were part of the story. The entire event was magnificent and a wonderful celebration to her amazing accomplishment. I was so very grateful to get to be there to celebrate with her.
She is in the process of revising the sequel and I cannot wait to read it!
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
I start my days really early. Sometimes as early as 4:45am. So by the time the evening rolls around, I am wiped. I often feel like I don’t want to move an inch from the couch.
Thankfully, bedtime is relatively easy in my house. Both of the kids go down between 6-7pm and there is no routine except their brush their teeth and say goodnight. We spent years doing baths, reading in bed, etc. but now they are both old enough to do much of that on their own. However, they still liked to be tucked in.
Each night when Nathaniel asks me if I’d be willing to tuck him in, my instincts are to say no. I am too tired. I don’t want to walk up the stairs. I don’t want to move a muscle. But last year, I made a promise to myself: I will never say no when the kids ask me to tuck them in.
I don’t have a huge amount of time left with my kids being kids. David’s already 11 and Nathaniel is 7. My bet is that within 8 years (if not less) no one will be asking me to tuck them in again. (Well maybe my grandkids one day!) And I want to remember to cherish each of these years, days, moments. I want to tuck them in while they are still here and still willing to be tucked in.
So I never say no.
I get up and walk up the stairs holding their soft, wonderful hands and love and kiss and hug them every night that I am home.
And I am so very glad that I get to.
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
David’s been learning to play the acoustic guitar for about two years now. We have a teacher who comes over once a week for thirty minutes. I’d say he practices a lot, but he doesn’t. Though he’s really good for a kid who practices pretty little. And as someone who has absolutely no musical talent, it blows my mind every single time he plays.
When he and his friends were choosing their talent show song this year, they decided that David had to play the electric guitar to do justice to the song. Thanks to the generosity of the school teacher and a parent, we procured a guitar for a few weeks and he practiced a bunch of hours to get it all down.
If hearing him play the acoustic gave me joy, the electric pretty much made me ecstatic. I just couldn’t stop grinning the whole time he practiced.
I hope that he continues to play for the next few years until he gets really good and decides if he wants to continue or not. I am so grateful that my kids are more musical than I ever was!
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
I’ve been working with a team in Zurich for the last year and a half. This means that I wake up around 5am and head right to meetings. When the boys wake up and eat breakfast and get ready for school, I am always in meetings. This means, I need help during that time of day. I need the boys to be self-sufficient and be totally ready when it’s time to go so we can rush out the door and I can be back in time for my next meeting.
Since Nathaniel wakes up earliest in our family, he quickly inherited the making-lunch chore. His first task when he wakes up is to get dressed for school and then prepare each of the lunches. My kids are super-picky eaters, so lunch is pretty much the same thing every day: a big carrot, a small yogurt, an apple or banana, a cheese stick, a few crackers and a sandwich. Nathaniel can prepare all of it except the sandwich. So he makes all the parts he can, prepares the bread and gets out the peanut butter and jelly for me and a knife, and then I spread it. He then packs everything up and puts them in the bags and the school bags by the door.
It doesn’t seem to me like this is a very big deal. But a lot of people seem surprised when I tell them Nathaniel packs our lunches. Maybe they’re envisioning much more sophisticated lunches. Either way, Nathaniel is a huge huge help in making our mornings smoother and faster.
Thank you sweet little boy!
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
When planning for this year, my goal was to create an art project for each month. I thought this would avoid the falling off the wagon I do each June/July. I thought giving myself a chance to reset every month would keep me more on top of things and it would allow me to experience a variety of art throughout they year.
I am excited to say I was totally right.
My year-long project of sketching and journaling my “choose” has gone defunct in a few months but my daily art for each month is thriving. I’m done all the way up to October. Considering the fact that I will do December Daily in December, I feel good about my chances of finding something for October and November. And even if I were to skip those two, that means I will have done 2,000 pieces of art in 2016. How awesome is that?
As I sit to plan my 2017 plans, I am hoping to learn from this lesson. Life is all about learning what works for me and making it work for me 🙂
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
As a culmination of their Social Studies work, David’s school has a tradition that the 5th grade class puts on a Colonial Play. Each of the kids gets to pick a character and then they write 1-2 scenes with that character. All the scenes are then sent to a company which weaves them into a play. They then come to the school with costumes, props and the kids put the play on for the parents.
This means the play is different each time since the kids are writing the scenes. Pretty awesome, no?
David was Patrick Henry this year. (His first choice was Nathan Hale.) I will admit I knew pretty much nothing about him but I still loved watching the play.
I love how much my physics-loving kid loves History. I love how he already knows so much more than I do. I love love love everything this child adds to my life.
Thank you, David.
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
I know I am behind in my stories but I am in Zurich at the moment so it’s not possible for me to go back and add them. I figured while I am here I can tell the story of this week. I was scheduled to come to Zurich for a business trip this week. Actually, originally I wasn’t planning on coming. We have a quarterly meeting for my greater team and I knew the April one would be in Zurich and I had decided it wasn’t worth it for me to come this time around. It was to be right after my kids’ Spring Break and I felt like I’d taken too many trips recently.
I was invited to an amazing weekend that I really wanted to go to instead. Something special that would have been really good for my soul and it would mean I got to meet some of the people I’ve wanted to meet in person for a long time. Even though I really wanted to go to this event, I wasn’t sure it was ok to leave my kids and husband for something so much for me. Especially in the middle of Spring Break.
As I was grappling with that decision, another team that I work with in Mountain View and NYC decided they would all go to Zurich for this April conference.
Which now meant I was going too.
As I bought tickets for the flight, I decided I would leave a few days early and go home to Istanbul for the weekend instead and get to see my family. I was excited to see all of them in person for the first time since last summer (except my mom whom I was fortunate to see during my last trip to Zurich in January). As the date approached, however, I began stressing about the recent events there and got worried that something might happen or somehow I wouldn’t be able to get back to my kids. Even though I could tell it was supremely irrational, I couldn’t get the thoughts out of my head.
I struggled with the decision for days, even up to the moment at the Zurich airport when I had to decide whether to get on the next plane or to leave and go to my hotel. I ended up going to my hotel and not taking the trip home. I then proceeded to be sad for the next 40 hours. I felt terrible for not being home with my family but I also felt emotionally and physically exhausted. On Saturday, I was so sad that I decided I had to leave the hotel room and go take a walk. I snapped this photo as I walked around Schipfe where I sat down with coffee and my book.
As I write this, I am sitting in my bed, still sad that I didn’t go home. Even though deep down I know it wasn’t meant to be this time around, I can’t stop myself from feeling like I disappointed my family, I chose not to be brave, and I missed my chance to see the people I love so much. I have been going round and round in my head and in my heart. I’ve been holding tight to the disappointment.
As it happens sometimes.
Sometimes I make a decision and I struggle with it for a long, long time. And maybe I will never know if this was right or wrong but I do know that part of being an adult is living with the decisions I make. I am trying to rest, write, do art, spend a lot of time video chatting with my family, and doing my best to enjoy this unexpected weekend in Zurich.
Grateful that the people who love me are kind enough to forgive me and love me anyway.
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
When I was a teenager, my mom watched CNN constantly. At least it felt that way to me. I couldn’t understand why she kept listening to the news. What her fascination was with the terrible events everywhere. All throughout college, she would call me each time something major happened in the United States and I was often clueless since I never ever watched the news.
In my twenties and thirties, I continued not to watch the news. I would spend Sundays reading the New York Times and I would spend my nights watching the Daily Show. Those two were my source of news in the world.
Until this year.
Early in the election cycle, I became obsessed with the election news. Watching the debates turned into watching CNN for the latest news about the election and next thing I know, I can’t stop watching CNN. So much so that when I was traveling all summer, I made sure both my phone and my tablet can play CNN on wifi using my cable account from home. So much so that Nathaniel asked me if I still watched CNN when I was in Zurich, Seattle, and Sydney for work. And yes, of course I did.
Yes, it’s sad.
If you’ve spent any time watching CNN, you’ll know that they repeat the same information every hour. This means if you’re watching it for 3-5 hours, you’re listening to a lot of repeats. It also means I’m hearing a lot of non-election related news. Most of which is depressing and sad.
It got to a point where I’d wake up in the morning and be scared to walk down the stairs and turn on the TV to find out yet another terrorist attack or terrible news about Turkey. It has definitely affected my peace.
And yet I can’t stop. This election has me reeling. I am not one of those people who slows down when there’s a traffic accident in the lane going the other way. I don’t like to watch it. I drive carefully but pay attention to my own road. And yet, I can’t seem to ignore this one. I keep coming back for more and more.
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
Nathaniel’s first grade class did a Wax Museum show this year where each of the kids were given a character and had to learn facts about him/her to then recite at our local library. They also were to wear props, etc. Nathaniel got assigned Harry Houdini. He spent a lot of time learning about the magician and then a lot of time memorizing the text. He could recite it even three months later.
But then on the day of, he decided he didn’t want to recite it from memory so he took the paper with him anyway. And his props were handcuffs borrowed from a friend. As with most things Nathaniel does, he got really into it. This is one of my favorite things about Nathaniel. He does everything with so much enthusiasm that it’s infectious.
Love you my little magician.
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
My kids are not the kids who do a ton of activities. With my schedule it’s not possible for me to drive the kids around after school from activity to activity. And my kids like having unstructured free time so I try not to force them to do activities. There are only a few non-negotiables for me:
- must learn to swim
- must volunteer
- must do a sport
- must do one other activity that you like (at the moment this is music for both kids. David’s learning the guitar and Nathaniel is learning the piano.)
David’s been taking swimming lessons since he was in preschool. This is 30 minutes a week split across 4 kids with 5 minutes of play time at the end of each class. Which means each kid gets about 6 minutes of instruction a week. At that rate, I’m amazed they learn at all to be honest. Especially because we don’t have a pool and don’t spend our summers in the water. So my kids don’t get a tremendous amount of practice time either.
Alas, slowly but surely, David’s made his way all the way up the swim school ladder. He’s learned all the strokes including butterfly. He’s already well ahead of me, but a part of me wishes he loved it enough to want to join swim team. Alas, he doesn’t. So I promised him that he can quit once he gets this ribbon.
And here we are. Achievement unlocked. Great job, David.
Stories from 2016 is a year-long project for 2016. You can read more about my projects for 2016 here.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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